I can’t make this stuff up.

Auntie Kim made me a trade: I would clean up the kitchen, empty the dishwasher and load it again, and she would give the girls a bath. Ha ha ha – sucker! Twenty minutes later, I had showered, taken out the trash, and was finishing loading the dishwasher when Kim came out of the bath.

“Hey!” I heard a short person yell from the other room. “Why are you leaving me?” Turns out Gracie (the short person in question) wasn’t bathing fast enough. Kim thought leaving her on her own would be incentive to hurry. Yeah. That short person doesn’t hurry for anyone.

Just to prove my point, five minutes later Gracie was still toweling off, singing and then talking to herself. A dramatic pretend-play scene was unfolding and Kim and I were desperately trying to decipher exactly what was going on. I was only catching three words out of every twenty. One of them was “leopards.” And then I saw understanding dawn across my sister’s face. She started signing to me – Gracie was playing with pretend leopards. And teaching them sign language.

“No! This is ‘C!’ That’s ‘A!'” we heard ring out. Hunh. Funny how distinct each word sounded now that I knew what she was talking about.

And then…Gracie finished her alphabet lesson with her leopards and led them all in a rousing rendition of YMCA.